


The Cosmic Sandwich Job

by Keiya



Category: Leverage
Genre: Aliens Didn't Make Them Do It, Aliens!, Humour, Multi, These were good aliens, Writing humour is a literal torture you guys, anyway, no it's not funny, stop snickering you jerkface
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-01
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-27 14:08:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10024136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keiya/pseuds/Keiya
Summary: Everyone thinks situation is ridiculous. Everyone has their own reasons. Everyone is right.Or, the one where the aliens abducted them.(Yes, you should feel sorry for the aliens.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venilia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venilia/gifts).



> Shout out to Venilia because she a) embraced this idea, b) beta-read the fic and c) is astonishingly awesome in general.  
> Also shout out to Tasara who I roped into watching Leverage and then reading this (I'm not sorry, you are not surprised).

“Hardison.” Eliot says.  
“I feel threatened and sorta queasy.” Hardison pinches the bridge of his nose.  
“We intend no harm,” alien says.  
“Oh, not from you. From him!”  
Eliot clenches his teeth dramatically.  
“Aliens!” Parker sing-songs.  
“We need a plan,” Nate says. “And I need a whiskey.”  
“No whiskey,” Sophie says. “It’s just aliens.”  
The aliens look kind of flabbergasted. Also insectoid-like.

Their rooms (their cell? Suite?) is quite nice. There is a kitchen, so there is Eliot in an apron, and pasta he found in the shelves and claimed to be somewhat eatable even if not the best brand out there in the process of cooking. The pot is fuming. Eliot is fuming. Hardison is innocent. Parker is hanging from the bars on the ceiling upside down.  
“I’m not sure if we should be proud or bothered by how easily they adapted to it,” Sophie murmurs to Nate. She appears to be completely calm, which probably means that she’s so out of her depth she’s given up on making sense of the situation and is concentrating on trouble-shooting.  
“Fucking aliens,” Nate says and knocks back a shot. There is a slight possibility that the whisky he’s ingested is not of a human variety and is therefore more or less poisonous for humans. As a wise and experienced leader he is, Nate makes the most rational decision to leave his team unaware about that.  
Sophie sighs.  
“Do you think I’m that much of an idiot to make a connection with aliens in some random chatroom or online game and be like, come for us, gonna be your victim, ready for abduction -- that’s what you think?” Hardison flails all around the kitchen.  
“Yes! Yes, Hardison, that’s what I’m thinkin’, ‘cause you’re that much of an idiot!” Eliot carefully puts the knife down on the table and takes a step towards Hardison, radiating intent. Hardison takes a step back, for once radiating common sense. Parker watches them, turning her head from one to another with the fascination suitable for children.  
“Are you gonna have sex?” she asks.  
Nate chokes on his second shot.  
“What?”  
“Parker, we’re not --!”  
“Why not?” she says in her most stubborn and confused voice. “I mean, me and Hardison, we’re doing it, and me and Eliot, but not you two together and not we three together. I don’t get why.”  
Nate finally coughs through the remains of his alcohol and says, “Guys, can we deal with fucking sentient bees from the other galaxy first? Also, I didn’t need to know that.”  
Sophie raises her eyebrows.  
“You didn’t know?”  
Hardison shrugs. “I don’t know, man, they look more mosquito-like for me.”  
Eliot huffs and adds pasta into the pot.  
Parker gets upright and goes to the ceiling with a whoosh.  
Nate groans and bangs his head to the table.

“I’m just sayin’, man…”  
“Hardison, my food. It’s a bit of my soul.”  
“Yes, yes, it is, and it’s definitely too salty!”  
Eliot tries to take his plate. Hardison hugs it and fights with his elbows, still managing to shovel food into his mouth. 

 

“I’m pretty sure they’re spiders.”  
“They don’t even look like spiders, Hardison.”  
“Yeah, no, but I have seen some webs in the corners.”  
“Well, that’s either ordinary spiders from Earth, or unexpected possibly murderous space spiders.”  
“Or ordinary murderous spiders from Earth!”  
“...Right. Thank you, Parker, for your cheerful input.”  
“Man, I love family dinners,” Hardison laughs. Eliot looks at him like he blames him for everything bad in the world ever.  
“The plan is,” Nate says, “to collect enough info and get out of here. To the Earth. Wherever, let’s not be picky.”  
“Wait,” Hardison says, “that’s waaay too elaborate and specific. I need to write it down. Does anyone have a pen?”  
“Shut up, Hardison, you’re not cute.” Eliot takes the empty plate from him, furrowing his eyebrows.  
“Eliot,” Parker says. “You’re lying, Eliot. That’s your face for when you think he’s cute but you’re annoyed by it.”  
“Oh,” Sophie realises. “That’s why he makes that face so often?”  
An alien at the door tries to imitate the sound of human coughing. It sounds like metal screeching.  
“Okay,” Nate says with his game face on. It’s his usual face, only without the longing for a drink. “Let’s go steal a space trip to Earth.”  
“Can’t we just steal a spaceship?”  
“No, Parker.”  
“Awww.”

 

“I can’t just woo an alien, Nate!” Sophie sounds like she kind of wants a nice full bottle of red wine, or to punch Nate in the head. Or maybe to try to bang the stupid out of him, which, well. Doesn’t work that miraculously, but better than any other strategy they had tried out yet.  
“Since when, Sophie?” Nate raises his eyebrows.  
“Since when? Since forever! Since I’m not a space-insect-whatever!”  
“I don’t know,” Hardison shrugs. “You’re, you know. Pretty fly. For a white girl.”  
“Damn it, Hardison.” Eliot’s face is crunched. Sophie is pretty sure it’s his “you’re funny, and I’m annoyed about it” face. It’s close to the “you’re-cute-I’m-annoyed” one.  
“Am I fly too?” Parker jumps on Hardison’s back. Hardison catches her. Eliot catches his arm, stabilizing him.  
“The flyest, babe!”  
“And Eliot?”  
“Can you stop ignoring us?” the alien watching them asks. “It’s unnerving.”  
They all glance at him, and go back to ignoring him.  
“I don’t have the necessary… assets, alright? I don’t even know what the necessary assets are.”  
“Eliot’s too solid to be fly, babe.”  
“It’s never been about your assets! Not that you don’t have lovely assets.”  
Sophie gives him a face that’s two-thirds “Excuse you, are you aware of the idiocy you demonstrated” and one-third “That was never in question”.  
“You can call them breasts, it’s okay, Nate.”  
“No, he can’t!” Sophie hisses.  
“So Eliot is something else?”  
“Oh, Eliot’s something else alright.”  
Eliot growls. Hardison chuckles. Parker catches a strand of Eliot’s hair into her fingers, and he makes the weakest attempt of freeing himself in the history of humanity. Hardison chuckles harder.  
Sophie looks at the sentient insect at the door and shrugs miserably while Nate pats her shoulder.  
“Babe,” he tries. Everybody winces. The alien at the door feels the irresistible need to wince too but is not sure how to do that since he’s an alien.  
“Okay, okay,” Nate says. “Soph. Charming, wooing, grifting -- it’s not about your beautiful body.”  
“It’s about her beautiful soul?” Hardison asks, because the opportunity to be a fucker is something nobody should miss, ever.  
“No, it’s about her amazing skills, her scary NLP and even scarier ability to just get people and what they want.”  
“It’s not that hard!” Sophie says.  
“Riiiiight,” everyone breathes out.  
“Why are you so creepy?” Sophie complains, looking extremely pleased.  
“Why does she say it like it’s bad?” Parker asks Hardison in a stage whisper.  
“I literally don’t know, babygirl.”  
“Anyway, the point is,” Nate says, “you can seduce any alien you want, and if not, you can certainly distract them while trying.”  
Sophie raises her eyebrows.  
“Sorry, so you’re implying I can’t seduce an alien?”  
Nate looks like a lost five year old boy who’s just happened to be over forty and debauched in the worst kind of sense.  
“I’m not sure how you managed to get that from my sentences.”  
“You know what, Nathan Ford,” Sophie says. “I will seduce this poor alien bastard into submitting, giving up everything he owns, and then thanking me for it!”  
She storms off. Alien at the door follows her with shocked and captivated kind of look.  
“Woah,” Parker says slowly. “And you almost had this pep talk down.”  
Nate shrugs.  
“Well, at least she’s motivated now.”  
“And to think, some people consider you a decent human being.” Hardison looks up in the mocking desperation.  
“Yeah? Who, for example?” Eliot is smirking.  
“I like it when you don’t hesitate to show what smartass you really are. Badass, smartass, great ass. You’re Deadpool in disguise, aren’t you?” Hardison raises his eyebrows.  
Eliot blinks at him.  
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Hardison, and I’m so grateful for that, you’ve no idea, none.”  
“Lies and slander!” Hardison kisses Eliot on the cheek and goes to the door. Eliot huffs and follows him, Parker on his heels.  
Nate watches them leave. Then he sighs and lets himself have not-so-rare moment of self-pity,  
“Why,” he says. “Why.”

Sophie touches up her make up, straightens up her clothes and sighs. The gray glistening light of the alien starship does wonders for her skin. Scary, horrible wonders.  
“Hey,” she says to a random alien in the hallway. “You come here often?” Which is weaker than anything she allowed to herself since her twenties, but she’s flying completely blind here, so she’s going to cut herself a big nice slice of slack and not be ashamed of it.  
The alien looks at her doumbfondedly, his eyes unreadable, glassy and insectoid. Sophie would have never in her life guessed that there would be a moment in which she’d regret that she hadn’t watched The Bee Movie, but alas, the main theme in her life is the complete predictability of appearance of the most unpredictable events. See also: Parker. Nate. Leverage. Aliens.  
Then again, she is not sure if surviving would be worth it.  
“The Bee or not to be,” she mutters, “that is the question.”  
“I’m… sorry?” the alien chirps.  
“Oh? Oh! Don’t be, please.” Sophie smiles a little. “I just need some help, and I’m so nervous because I’m not sure if it’s allowed.” She tries to look innocent and helpless. How do innocent-and-helpless unidentified insects look? Maybe she has to lie on her back and pretend she can’t roll over and get up. She sets on flailing a little.  
“I’d like to to help you,” the alien says. Then, after a pause, adds unsurely, “ma’am.”  
“Aren’t you sweet,” Sophie mutters using her thickest southern accent because she just can, basically, and looks the alien over, searching for the device that helps him understand humans. It would be awfully useful. Awfully bad for her mental health though.  
“Sweet?” The alien asks her, his voice a bit high pitched. He looks hopeful suddenly. Sophie blinks.  
“Honey?” she asks.  
Alien looks with an excitement of a puppy who smelled treats out of someone’s pocket and who also knows that humans are capable of giving bellyrubs. It’s also a look Sophie’s targets usually wear before giving up a fortune for a simple kiss.  
Puppies are still better.  
“Oh,” Sophie says. She officially has something of a plan. The world better be prepared.  
(It’s not. Obviously.)

“Hardison.”  
“No.”  
“Hardison. “  
“I didn’t.”  
“You so did.”  
“No.”  
“Hardison.”  
“It’s like the sandwich all over again, isn’t it? You, all stubborn and bothered with your completely baseless suspicions and with zero proofs. Me, with the fear for my life.”  
“You look totally scared,” Parker says. She sits on the table and smiles.  
“I’m shaken to the core of my existence and shattered to pieces, babygirl.” Hardison makes his eyes big and miserable.  
“Hardison!”  
“No.”  
Sophie coughs delicately from where she is standing at the doors. The way these three turn any place they’re together in into playground is astonishing, charming, and unbelievably annoying.  
“Eliot,” she says. “I need your skills.”  
“I get to punch an alien?” Eliot asks, like he was waiting for that exact moment for at least half of his life, -- not dreaming about it and not fearing it, but just acknowledging the probability of this turn of events.  
Which… He most likely was.  
“No,” Sophie says. “Your other skills.”  
Eliot raises his eyebrows.  
“You found the alien bee queen and want me to seduce her?”  
Hardison scoffs. Parker huffs.  
“No, Eliot,” Sophie says. “Your other other skills.”  
“She needs him to grow the bonsai,” Hardison says in the worst theatrical whisper ever. Parker nods like it makes complete sense.  
“By the way, I stole you something.”  
“Aw, you shouldn’t have!”  
“I shouldn’t?”  
“Just kidding, you absolutely should’ve. Gimme.” 

 

Five minutes later Eliot is working his magic over the stove while Hardison tinkers with a small device of alien production.  
“It’s a recipe for a disaster,” Eliot mutters.  
“Wait, I thought it’s for caramel sauce,” Hardison says, breaking the device down and trying to recreate it.  
“My thing is the caramel in the making. Yours is the freaking explosion waiting to happen.” Eliot stirs the contents of the small sauce pan.  
“I mean, you’d’ve looked much more intimidated and unconfident about my skills if you, y’know, would try to leave the supposed zone of said supposed explosion.” Hardison finishes and looks at the result. The device looks exactly how it did before Hardison got to it. There are some loose parts on the table next to it, because of course, because it happens literally always - you break something apart, you get it back together, you find some spare details, except they’re not spare, they’re critical and nothing works.  
“Traitors,” Hardison says to them.  
“The stove is here, so I’m trying to kick both you and explosion out. In other words, No, you move.”  
Hardison drops the device on the table. “You fucking with me.”  
“Why would I?” Eliot smirks, once and for all establishing that there is room for more than one little (concentrated, to be honest) shit on the team.  
“You’re quoting Captain Rogers at me. You’re lucky you’re still wearing pants right now.” Hardison picks the device up and starts tearing it apart again. “But if you’ll say something Tony Stark, my actual hero, has ever said, all bets… and pants… are off.”  
Eliot stares at him.  
Parker uses it as a chance to steal a spoon of almost ready caramel sauce. She runs off with it, jumps over the table, and hides. No drop of slowly boiling sauce is lost.  
“Humans are so fascinating,” one of the aliens murmurs to Sophie. “We’re studying you.”  
“She’s not… a perfect example of statistically normal human being,” Sophie says.  
“Are you?”  
“...No,” Sophie sighs.  
“It’s ready,” Eliot announces.  
“Eliot,” Hardison says. His eyes go all vulnerable and unprotected, his face full of soft hope. He gazes at the saucepan with the dedication and devotion of someone who’s deeply in love.  
Hardison is grifting like he means it, and Sophie feels the urge to applaud. Also to slap him just a bit, because if he can act on this level, why he doesn’t do that on the jobs? Also, would he play some parts in her theater if she found some good sweets to pay him with?  
Eliot puts a couple of spoons of caramel sauce in the cup. Puts it in front of Hardison. Wafts his hand over it so the smell will definitely reach Hardison’s nose.  
He raises his eyebrows.  
“Did you, or didn’t you invite aliens to come on the earth and kidnap us?”  
“Man, I thought torture was forbidden by Geneva conventions!” Hardison makes grabby hands. Eliot makes a scary face and slaps his hands away.  
“It’s an interrogation tactic where I present you with a glorious opportunity and ask for information instead. Works wonders.”  
“Since it’s not working on me, I’d say it’s less effective than you imagine.”  
“Oh really?” Eliot lifts the cup up so it’s directly under Hardison’s nose.  
“You’re murdering my good opinion of you. With astonishing cruelty, man. There it goes. We lost it. Someone call the time.”  
Eliot leans towards Hardison. Hardison looks him straight in the eyes. Eliot holds the cup between them, but they both don’t really pay attention to it.  
“I grieve with thee,” Eliot murmurs slowly.  
“You fucker,” Hardison growls. “Parker!”  
On cue, Parker drops from somewhere up, takes the cup and stands next to Hardison. Her face brightens with excitement. Hardison lays his hand on the back of Eliot’s neck, touches Eliot’s forehead with his own.  
“Yay!” Parker says. “Kisses!”  
“Parker.”  
“Babe.”  
“They do know we’re watching, yes?” the alien asks Sophie.  
“I’m not sure.”  
“They don’t care, no?”  
“I’m not sure about that either.”  
“...Fuck,” Eliot says. “Hardison. No.”  
Parker lets out a frustrated growl. Hardison automatically sets his left hand on her arm, soothing and calming her.  
“Yeah, man, not here, I get that. ‘Kay.” Hardison nods slowly and lets go of Eliot’s neck.  
The room drowns in the silence.  
Everyone thinks situation is ridiculous. Everyone has their own reasons. Everyone is right.  
“So... “ one of the aliens says, awkwardly. “Our bribe?”  
“Where is Nate, by the way?”  
“Do we really want to know?”  
“I’m pretty sure he’s bonding with some middle-aged alien over their tragic backstories. That happens every time I leave him unsupervised for more than five minutes.” Sophie shrugs. “I don’t know how to make him quit.”  
“The burden of a white man,” Hardison notes.  
“We didn’t really want to know,” Eliot says, scowling.  
Somewhere in the personal quarters of one of the high-titled aliens Nate can feel his ears burn and has no idea why.

In the half of an hour caramel sauce is eaten, every cup and sauce pan itself is scrapped, and aliens look content, guilty, wistful and ready to give up secrets of universe in general and their spaceship in particular.

 

“Everybody already knows you’re amazing, so nobody is exactly surprised, Hardison.”  
“But I literally did the impossible!”  
“You do the impossible three times before lunch.”  
“I don’t! I mean, I do, but it’s, like, the possible impossible, and this was the impossible impossible, Eliot! I figured out the alien tech! Decades ahead of anything humans developed and based on entirely different set of principles, okay, it’s not just...”  
“Somebody…” Eliot growles.  
“No, Eliot,” Parker says firmly. “You want him kissed to silence, you kiss him. That’s what I do. It kinda works.”  
“Totally works, babygirl.”  
“Not entirely. You just start talking again later.”  
“Hey!..”  
“What’s going on here?” Nate asks from the doors.  
“Well, Sophie found out about the ultimate weakness of alien insects, Eliot used it to make them cooperate, Parker stole a souvenir and a key to the bridge, and I, uh, did not a lot, just figured out the completely unknown symbol system and technology and navigated the ship towards the Earth. Not a big deal, really.”  
“So,” Nate says smugly, “everything went according to my plan, huh?”  
Hardison throws his hands in the air.  
“Whatever! We’re landing in forty minutes. Check for your baggage, make sure you didn’t forget anything. If you want to steal anything else, please, do it quickly and responsibly. The unappreciated genius - that’s me if you’re wondering - needs to go watch everything and, you know, pilot the alien spaceship.” He storms out.  
“Why does he always do that?”  
“Rough childhood?”  
“That’s always the reason.”

 

In forty five minutes the five of them are powerwalking shoulder to shoulder on their own planet. Behind their backs the alien spaceship takes off the ground and disappears in the blast of light. All in all, it’s a very subtle matter.  
“So,” Nate says. “Not that we saved anyone but ourselves today, unless we’re willing to count saving alien bees…”  
“Flies.”  
“Beetles.”  
“...unidentified insects from sugar cravings, but I still consider the day a success.”  
“I don’t know, man, I have this,” Hardison shows him the device from the spaceship. “It’ll certainly help our clients in the future.”  
“I’m going to avoid asking about purpose of this thing and you’re going to use it some day to save us all in the last moment.”  
“Sounds acceptable.” Hardison shrugs. “As long as you’re not asking about what I’m doing with it in the middle.”  
“Oh, I won’t.”  
“Hardison,” Eliot says gravely. “If you’ll admit that you made a contact with aliens and made ‘em show up and abduct us, I’ll take you and Parker home and to bed.”  
Parker and Hardison simultaneously turn to Eliot with matching shit-eating grins.  
Eliot looks doomed and accepting of his inevitable fate.

A week later the familiar spaceship stands on the top of an abandoned building in the suburbia. The leader of alien insects is watching her subordinates load the ship with sacks of sugar.  
“You’re sure you don’t want to go with us, dear?” She asks.  
“Not this time, thank you.”  
“Well, in your ten years we will be back in this corner of the universe, so you can reconsider it.”  
“I will think about it.”  
Parker hugs alien queen goodbye. She embraces Parker a bit awkwardly, murmurs her goodbyes and gets into the spaceship.  
Parker watches it leave before going to bed to her boyfriends.  
(In ten years she’ll convince them to take a little space trip.)  
(Maybe not so little.)

**Author's Note:**

> Me: Okay, can you help me?  
> My friend: How?  
> Me: I need to seduce an alien. An insectoid one.  
> My friend: Keiya. Are you high, Keiya.  
> Me: It's for the plot!


End file.
